EDITORIAL – Kimpton Seafire: A new landmark on Seven Mile Beach

“Having known the evenings, mornings, afternoons.I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”– T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Ah, coffee spoons might seem a rather pedestrian metric or metaphor to measure out a life, but we must confess, we have a Cayman equivalent.

For us (and for years), we have observed the incremental progress of various Dart projects – be they the ever-expanding Camana Bay, the building and beautification of our roadways, the greening of our districts with donated public parks, and currently the ongoing expansion of the Esterley Tibbetts Highway, complete with tunnels and roundabouts, viaducts and “spurs” that go … well, who knows where?

Today, however, we celebrate the end of one road and the beginning of another, namely the ribbon cutting and grand opening of the Kimpton Seafire Resort + Spa. Although the site has already hosted one or two social affairs, the first overnight guests will check in Tuesday, Nov. 15, foreshadowing what promises to be a busy holiday and high season.

Of the 266 guest rooms, nearly all feature private balconies and vista views of Seven Mile Beach, the turquoise pool and the lush landscaping. Amenities include three restaurants (Ave is the flagship), the Spa at Seafire – an 8,500-square-foot facility featuring seven treatment rooms – a 1,770-square-foot fitness center, and a 7,076-square-foot ballroom.

One thing deserves to be said – must be said – about any project or development that bears the Dart “brand”: Quality is never negotiable; quality is never in question – and the Kimpton Seafire Resort is no exception.

Three years and 3.3 million man-hours ago, planners and designers, horticulturalists and landscapers, artisans and architects joined as many as 1,000 construction workers to create this welcome addition to the Cayman urbanscape.

Notably, 100 percent of construction of the Kimpton was conducted by local contractors, and Caymanians will fill many of the 450-plus food and beverage, front and back office positions.

Built in to every Dart project is respect, bordering on reverence, for the environment, the use of indigenous plant materials (many of the 32,000 plants and trees on site were propagated in Dart’s own 26-acre nursery), and a commitment to the highest sustainable energy standards.

The Seafire has been conceived and constructed to receive the coveted LEED Silver certification, which is expected in due course. For the technical minded, Seafire features energy-efficient LED lighting inside and out, a 143-kilowatt solar array and a state-of-the-art geothermal cooling system.

As the Kimpton Seafire welcomes its first guests, we take this opportunity to welcome our first new major hotel and resort to Grand Cayman in nearly a decade.

At the same time, we congratulate and applaud everyone in the Dart and Kimpton organizations who enabled this project to progress from their original vision to today’s ribbon-cutting.

4 COMMENTS

Congratulations and thank you for another job well done to the Dart Foundation, as I re-quote the words of Editorial………………..”Any project that bears the Dart brand is never negotiable; Quality is never in question and the Kimpton Seafire Resort is no exception” Expressed in one word “Awesome”

I think this development needs to be put in perspective. To start off with it’s only replacing a 230 room hotel with a 266 room hotel so not much change there. Then we have to remember that however good Kimpton may be, by global standards they are a relatively small chain that is virtually unknown outside the USA. But the big negative is that Seafire is going to be competing with a number of established hotels that are not only already struggling financially but don’t have Dart’s resources to fall back on during the off seasons. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this pans out but I’ll bet that not everyone in the hotel business views this with quite as much enthusiasm as the Compass editorial team.

The architectural style of the buildings is not suited for a tropical Caribbean resort. Why in the world they have chosen to go with the “urban” ,” industrialized” style? From the distance it looks ugly and doesn’t blend with the surrounding environment.